The Baseball
by psudani
Summary: Alex visits his past so he can begin his future with Izzie.


A/N - I haven't written a story in quite some time. I actually have another story out there I never finished that I still feel guilty about, but this little story has been floating in my brain for a month and I needed to get in out there. Hope you enjoy it. It is a only going to be one chapter. The setting is post-season finale. Hopefully everything else you need to know is in the story. It's a pretty simple story filled with run-ons and fragments and may be borderline boring, but it kept me busy on a hot summer's night. If you like it, hate it or just want to say you read it please review. I like emails.

It was 1929 in Boston, Massachusetts. My great-grandfather was fifteen. His first step onto American soil was in anger. Mad at the world for being shipped from his Russian home by his parents. No money, no food, no home to speak of but he didn't care. The pit in his stomach that ached for a warm meal couldn't compete with raw pain that cloaked his fists waiting to let loose his rage.

I bet it doesn't surprise you that the Karev's started their American journey with a fist fight just as it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn my grandfather ended his American journey in a fist fight. He got three blows to the guy's stomach and one to the head before his lights went out for good. It was 1961 and he was forty years old. My Dad became man of the house when he was seven.

I am sure you are wondering why I am telling you all this. You probably would like to hear some stories about childhood vacations or a surgery that rocked. I could even read a few of those girly magazines you like so much. How about I promise to get Cristina in here and read them to you. You'll love that.

See, I have a point here, Iz. I need to tell you about all this family crap because I want you to understand. It's not an excuse. I don't want you to think it is an excuse…just something for you to understand. Us Karev's have been messed up for a long time. Each man tries to be better. They try to get the fight out of them early. It's like we all stand at that port hungry and desperate no idea what to do or how we got there and the only thing we can think of is to ball up our fists and make the world pay.

My great-grandfather thought his first born son would change him. He promised he would never leave him the way his parents abandoned him, but his first-born son died when he was nine. My grandfather was the youngest and the only remaining boy. He wasn't as strong or as smart as his older brother and my great-grandfather never let him forget it. When he was sixteen, he left home in the middle of the night taking the one thing my great-grandfather had left that he still loved – a Cy Young autographed baseball. You see, back when my great-grandfather stepped off the boat in Boston all those years ago, he did find himself a fight - a fight that won him a baseball. At the time he didn't know who Cy Young was; he just liked having a baseball. Two years went by before he found out that the signature on that ball belonged to one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the game. Twenty years later it would be lost to him forever, just like his son - payment for never teaching his son how to be a man instead of a fighter.

You still listening, Iz? It's tough to tell because you haven't squeezed my hand in a few hours. I bet you are. I bet when I'm not looking you rolling your eyes behind those closed lashes of yours wondering why your husband is talking to you about a damn baseball. The thing is you haven't woken up yet so I get to keep talking and you don't get a choice in the subject. I am sure you would rather ask about the apartment I was telling you about this morning, but I am going to pretend you are asking what ever happened to the baseball.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, my grandfather stole the baseball. He took that ball, a pair of pants and two shirts and used all the money he had saved to catch the first bus out of Boston. He had no idea where Des Moines was – he didn't even know how to say it really, but he knew that was where he was headed. When he got there, he got work as a farm hand about eighty miles outside the city in Geneva. He worked night and day until he could save up enough money to buy his own land. No matter how strapped for cash he was or how hungry he would get, he never touched that baseball. He dreamed of taking it to his father's funeral one day – show him one final time everything he missed.

When my grandfather died in the bar fight, he left my Dad two things – the Karev anger and that baseball. I bet you are wondering why my Dad never sold that baseball. Hell knows he could have used the money, but he had heard the story so many times, the history of that ball; just like I had to hear it over and over again and to him it was a symbol. The man that held the baseball was the leader of the Karev's - the keeper of the family, the heir to all that loneliness and fight. My Dad revered that baseball. No one in the house was allowed to touch it. Our lights would be out for days because my dad drank the electric bill and that damn baseball would sit on the shelf. My mom had to wash our clothes by hand one summer because we couldn't afford a new washing machine and that baseball would go on sitting there. Do you know what a Cy Young baseball is worth, Iz? Our house was falling apart, and there on a shelf under perfect glass sat thousands of dollars. I hated that baseball.

The night my Dad left, I went to the living room to get that ball and burn it, but it was gone. For years, every time the anger of what my Dad had done washed over me, I would think of the ball and get even angrier. He didn't care that he was leaving us - that we had nothing. My mom needed so much help, and he was gone. He needed to go. They would have killed each other, but I just thought maybe he could have left the ball -given us a chance. We survived without it though. My mom, for all her craziness, got us through it. She was the first person in my life to show me I could be more than the anger.

…And you – the only woman I have ever really loved – you both taught me how to be a man. I don't need a baseball with some pitcher's name on it for us to be a Family. I don't need the anger or the fight because you love me without it.

Alright Iz, Cristina and Meredith are here. They are going to stay with you for a few hours while I go take a shower and change clothes. You have been in this coma for three days and apparently I'm getting ripe. I'll be back soon though. Make Cristina read the Cosmo article with the quiz at the end. You know which one. It's ok if you want to wake up while I'm gone. I won't get mad for not being here. Just wake up soon, ok.

Alex finished getting dressed and then walked over to Joe's. He sat down at the bar stool and picked at the bowl of peanuts in from of him. Walter came by to get him a drink and ask about Izzie. He waved off the drink and quietly told Walter that nothing had changed then told Walter he needed to speak to Joe.

He watched as Walter interrupted Joe and pointed toward him at the end of the bar. Joe quickly excused himself from his customers and made his way over to him.

"Alex, I didn't expect to see you here for awhile. How's Izzie? Anything changed since I stopped by this morning?"

Alex shook his head. "No. She's gonna wake up though. This isn't that uncommon. She was so close to…her body has been…it's not uncommon."

"I know. She'll wake up. She's Izzie. She's probably resting up now because she plans for you guys to have like four kids."

He couldn't help it. With all the pain he was going through, the tiny little image in the back of Alex's head of four babies with Izzie made his lip twitch almost into a smile.

"Joe, I need the thing."

"The thing?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Thanks for keeping it for me. It's time. I need it."

Joe shook his head in acknowledgement before walking to the back of the bar. A few moments later he reappeared with a box in his hand.

"Man, this thing must be worth… "

"…to somebody. It's means nothing to me."

"I gotta ask, why get it now. You spend every waking moment in that hospital with your wife and then you come over here in the middle of all of it to get this. I don't get it."

Alex opened the box and looked at the baseball sitting there showing off its pristine signature. His mind floated back to the day he graduated med school. He was sitting in his Mom's living room when she appeared holding a gift. He never expected her to get him a gift. They just didn't have the money and she usually had a hard time remembering important dates. She sat down next to him and gave him her best smile before asking him impatiently to open the gift. He was shocked by its contents. All those years, all those memories tied to this one box. She must have taken it that night. When his father was in a fit of rage, she must have stolen it from right underneath him. Where she hid it all this time, he would never know. Why she chose that moment to give it to him he would never understand but there it was.

The symbol of being a Karev man staring at him almost begging him to showcase it the way his father did and his father before him. He never took it out of the box. He thanked his Mom as if she had given him the best present in the world and then buried the box deep within his suitcase. After he arrived in Seattle he didn't know what to do with it. He knew if he sold it like he wanted to when he first got there he would have just drank the profits or blown it on some car instead of putting it towards his school loans like he should. Selling that thing needed a real reason – something to change the course of the ill-fated Karev family.

Finally Alex looked up from the baseball. He had heard Joe's question but wasn't sure how to answer. Why did he need this now, in the middle of all that was going on? With everything that was still unknown. He knew the answer though. It was actually pretty simple.

"Joe, I need to go see a man about a ring."

The end.


End file.
